Wednesday comes from the English weekday name, ultimately "Woden's day," tied to the Norse god Odin.
Wednesday carries one of the most dramatic etymologies of any day-name-turned-given-name in English. It descends from the Old English Wōdnesdæg, the Day of Woden — Woden being the Anglo-Saxon form of Odin, the one-eyed, raven-accompanied Norse god of wisdom, war, poetry, and the dead. The Latin equivalent, Mercurii dies (Mercury's day), points to the same classical tradition of naming weekdays after planetary deities, since Mercury and Odin were considered analogous figures in the Roman-Germanic interpretive framework.
To bear the name Wednesday is, etymologically, to carry Odin's day on your shoulders — a fact that sits in fascinating tension with the name's current gentle, whimsical associations. As a given name, Wednesday is almost inseparable from Wednesday Addams, the deadpan, gallows-humored daughter of the fictional Addams Family, first appearing in Charles Addams's New Yorker cartoons in 1938 and later immortalized on television and in film. The character's flat affect, love of the macabre, and total immunity to social pressure made her a cult figure across generations — and the name Wednesday absorbed all of those qualities.
The 2022 Netflix series Wednesday gave the name a massive revival, introducing it to a new generation and pushing it onto baby name charts with surprising force. For parents drawn to it now, Wednesday is a name of gothic wit and quiet defiance: it announces, before the child has said a word, that she will not be ordinary.